PBS’ ‘Breakthrough’ Profiles Minority Scientists in U.S.
The next time you hear an account demonizing science and scientists, remember physicist Jim Gates or Nobel Prize winner Mario Molina or Disney engineer Victoria Aguilera. You’ll be able to remember them if you watch the new Blackside-produced series for PBS, “Breakthrough: The Changing Face of Science in America,” which shows the human side of science as well as anything on television.
Without pandering or very much sentiment, the six-hour program (airing over three weeks) describes how minority Americans are making significant progress in applied and theoretical science. Andre Braugher, a star of “Homicide: Life on the Street,” narrates the series.
In the first four hours reviewed, the urge to counter the stereotypes of cold, inhuman scientists overshadows even the theme of minorities working in an Anglo-dominated profession. Although astronomer Neil Tyson and biologist George Langford (in the first and third segments) stress the added blockades faced by ambitious, intellectual African Americans--from promotion to obtaining research grants--most of the scientists here seem to operate beyond race. Unlike the art world, necessarily embedded in cultural foundations, science more easily transcends differences.
That isn’t to say that these scientists are removed from their cultural roots. Navajo engineer Steve Grey (in the fourth segment) negotiates with federal officials in Washington, D.C., for a grant to fund his project to build wind power stations in non-electrified corners of his tribe’s reservation--and he also easily negotiates with “traditional” elders on the land. An electrical engineer like Michael Spencer could clearly have his pick of research institutes, but he’s chosen Howard University, a historically black college.
“Breakthrough” is most impressive, though, in its balance of character portraits and lucid explanations of some advanced scientific fields. Gates is the one most out on the edge, and even if we can’t comprehend his research in “superstring” theory, he seems like a poet as he writes his elegant formulas by hand.
The second segment is especially effective demonstrating how research--in this case, environmental--can have dramatic impact: Molina, for example, helped discover how CFCs eat away at the ozone layer and thus changed global environmental politics.
Though it seems to go out of its way to show some subjects sweating away in their favorite sport (see kids, scientists can be macho too!), “Breakthrough” doesn’t try to make these people more than who they are: men and women who have used their minds to defy prejudice, set an example for students and sometimes redefine their scientific path.
* “Breakthrough: The Changing Face of Science in America” airs 9 to 11 p.m. Mondays on KCET-TV Channel 28 through April 22.
